Barbara Metzger by Cupboard Kisses Page A

herself blushing. She hid her face in the hanky and gave the room a most cursory examination. Aside from the prevailing reek of tobacco smoke and the unmade bed, the place was almost neat. Small, but not the rat’s nest she’d expected from the gritty little man. They returned through the maroon parlor to the entry hall.
    “My suite is on the other side of the stairwell,” MacDermott told her. “I think you might take a peek at the sitting room without offending anyone’s sense of decorum,” he teased, having noticed her blushes. He’d also noted what a difference a little color made toward enlivening her looks.
    “It’s quite large,” she said from the doorway.
    “But the bedroom is small. Would you…?”
    Cristabel was already back in the hallway. “Those must be the best rooms in the house, Major.”
    “Oh yes, Lord Harwood was kind enough to make allowances for a half-pay officer. The rooms upstairs are all smaller and less costly, naturally, but the stairs are difficult for me to negotiate.” His next step was a faltering one, for emphasis. “I’ll manage, though, to show your charming self the way,” he said, leaning on his cane.
    Nick was standing in the entryway, blowing cigar smoke out the door, when the major asked him to carry Miss Swann’s bags. He would have kept chewing on the soggy leaves if not for MacDermott’s glare, at which he stubbed the cigar out on the doorpost and put the butt in his pocket. Hoisting Cristabel’s portmanteau in one hand and the hamper from Captain Chase’s housekeeper in the other, he followed MacDermott’s cane-aided progress, grunting. Only Cristabel, coming last, seemed to mind the bags clumping on the stairs and scraping against the wall, and the grunting.
    “There used to be four bedroom suites on this level,” MacDermott told Cristabel as they paused at the first landing. Blass set the bags down and wiped his face with a checkered cloth. “With sitting rooms and dressing rooms, I understand, but when Lord Harwood decided to change the house from a private dwelling, he made all of the rooms into bedchambers. Some of the larger ones have two tenants, and most of the smaller rooms don’t have doors to the corridor. An awkward arrangement.”
    “It’s very quiet.” The doors were all closed and no sounds reached the hallway, except Blass’s heavy breathing.
    “The gir—ah, guests keep pretty much to themselves. They’ll be at work, or readying to go, or resting from after. Diligent folks.”
    “They work at night, too?”
    “Yes, yes, didn’t I mention that? That’s why you wouldn’t want a room on this story, if one were vacant, which it isn’t. The girls come and go at all hours…shop girls, ah, baker’s assistants who leave well before dawn, and of course some of them attend concerts or the theater on their days off, so it’s quite noisy at times. Not what you’d like, I’m sure.”
    “Do you think I could see the rooms?”
    Blass wheezed, but the major ignored him. “Perhaps Fanny could show you in the morning. It wouldn’t be proper for me to knock, you know, in case they might be dressing.”
    “Oh, of course.” She thought she heard Blass murmur a high-pitched “a-course” in echo, but when she turned around he was already hefting the bags for the next flight up.
    This time Cristabel followed the officer, who oddly enough was somehow managing without the cane again, even though this second stairwell was uncarpeted and steep. Blass trailed after, puffing. Suddenly Cristabel stopped short, struck with a horrible idea. “There are no actresses or opera dancers here, are there?” she demanded.
    The major was dumbfounded, seemingly aghast that she would even know about such women. She did, for they figured prominently in Miss Meadow’s precepts. It was squash-faced Blass, bumping into her from behind with the hard-edged hamper, who answered: “’Eaven forbid.”
    Cristabel smiled at him. “Quite right. This has to be a